EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
I know what you're here for. What's his bias? Politically I at least like to think of myself as a true moderate, maybe (in US context) slightly naturally right-leaning but currently politically left-leaning if I had to be more specific.
User ID: 1043
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3mo ago
Well the Cuban prisons angle was way overstated for one, for two they don't, uh, want to go to back, and three we don't actually own that many ships and who is going to be the captain anyways? Incoming boats are much more difficult to deal with than deliberately sending out boats, especially since we both legally and morally (and, frankly, politically as well) have to be at least a little humane about it.
No, you basically do need buses or planes for people going to Mexico and planes exclusively for people going elsewhere. Though there would be a certain irony if we ended up buying a ton of Chinese-built ships to use for deportations.
That actually seems like a pretty good example. I'm not sure from the descriptions I'm reading how much was random round-ups and how much was how the government already had paperwork on a lot of them. This might help with visa overstays, but I think most immigration at least through the southern border generally does not generate a government paper trail. There also was a level of buy-in from the police and actually employers too (!) which I don't think would be replicated today. Also, Britannica says the number was probably more like 300k rather than the claimed million or more, so if we extrapolate to today, that only would deport 600k rather than the millions Trump says. Plus, this was 1954. Recall that the US had just exited the Korean War and fought WW2 in the same decade -- the scale, capability, and organization of the military back then was at a high point and with a large amount of manpower that frankly the National Guard today I don't think could replicate.
There are limits, or more accurately consequences, to what the US can do abroad. Like let's take Mexico. Mexico generally lets us get away with a lot, but the threat of force might cause a lot of issues. We would actually stand to lose a lot if we forced it too much, like think how much access the DEA has in Mexico, that could change overnight. So yeah, very short term guns would work, but I don't think it would last long, and is that really what we want to return to? Would give echoes of the gun-enforced interventionism of the early 20th century in Latin America, which a lot of people frown on today.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3mo ago
Ask and you shall receive!
This article summarizes some of the anecdotal concerns fairly well. As for polls, here is a source on comparisons to VP picks back to 1980, this article summarizes the four polls that asked specifically, and if you look at this YouGov poll linked in the previous roundup as an example, they have him at -8% (page 20), or -4% with registered voters more specifically, and -25% among self-identified moderates if you're trying to divine how the "swing vote" might go. Reuters/Ispos had him at -7% net, NPR/PBS/Marist at -3%, CNN -6%. The -13% was probably a less reputable poll, I was probably not cautious enough of hearsay there, but the original source I tracked down and is here.
Furthermore in at least the YouGov poll which I mentioned, and also the most recent Ipsos one, you can see independents and moderates reflect this trend, so it's not just closet Democrats. Ispos for example among n=341 independents shows a -15% net favorability rating!
So yeah, it's not just one poll, it's all of them. Obviously there's still plenty of space to go, it sounds like about a quarter to a third of voters either don't know him (Ipsos: 32% of independents, 20% of registered voters) or don't have a strong opinion right now, but given that normally VP picks provide an instant bump and only peter out later, it's big news. Polling seems to generally indicate that the upside of VPs more generally doesn't matter that much (though occasionally in their home state it does), but the downsides can move the needle. Palin for example didn't cost McCain the election (he lost by a lot) but as an example this paper thinks she cost him a whopping 2%. In national politics, that's very notable!
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3mo ago
But Trump wasn't going to get a show trial and usually a hypothetical president wouldn't either. So the Rubicon is a bad example in that sense and a framing that better reflects reality has to acknowledge that? Or is the core concern that the justice system a former president would be subjected to is too unreliable and there need to be more checks and balances involved?
I mean I think we agree that former presidents shouldn't have to deal with nuisance lawsuits but we shouldn't let that caution overpower the actual need for accountability mechanisms. There's an especially large hole currently in the accountability process during the lame duck period, where a president can no longer be held to electoral accountability, the Senate might not move fast enough to use impeachment, and the president might after getting out of office be in practice near totally immune to legal accountability. With how much power we give presidents as individuals, that worries me.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3mo ago
That's an interesting perspective! I did ask mostly because I was curious and I appreciate your thoughts.
On reflection, I guess to me the bribe issue seems a little too close to plausibility for me, especially when you cross it with the pardon power. While typically I trust presidents not to abuse the pardon power too badly, or if they do it's generally not a big deal, its specific interaction with the recent ruling seems a bit more dangerous than either aspect in isolation.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3mo ago
...so basically the exact same as the Biden proposal but without the 18 year limit? I assume you'd have to throw in something as a tiebreaker in case of even membered courts. But yeah, that doesn't sound so fundamentally different than the proposal overall.
I should add that my answer earlier applies to what you asked but not what was originally brought up -- Congress is sorta-mostly allowed to determine various things about how the Supreme Court is implemented (famously, the size is not actually specified anywhere). Whether or not Congress is allowed to meddle with things like term limits and size without using an actual amendment is an open question that last time (FDR's court packing) ended up being dodged after public outcry.
Notably, the effort died in the Senate itself partially at the hands of his own party (and the main legislator dying of a heart attack), after being pushed by the president as the originator not Congress itself, so we never got the showdown. Also, the original rationale was to add extras for each justice over age 70 largely due to them having a caseload that was too large, but this claim about caseload was strongly refuted. Of course, it was buried even deeper because the SC did in fact rule in FDR's favor in a few key cases soon after... but whether this was the swing justice caving to fear about court packing, or other reasons, was never fully settled at the time or by historians since.
So yeah. Open question. Might work. Probably not, due to politics. It would trigger at least some form of crisis though.
Also, remember that the earliest Supreme Court was often a traveling court and didn't even work together all of the time, and didn't take the constitutional review role for themselves for another decade. With that said, virtually everyone thought it was a good idea and has been somewhat retconned in some way into the Constitutional lore (checks and balances was a big thing but my understanding is judicial review itself wasn't quite explicit). So the omission of a few key points about how the Court would work, and some of the related checks, is somewhat understandable in that light.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3mo ago
The concern on #3 is like asking "who judges the judge of the judges" which is accurate and also makes me chuckle. I don't think it's entirely impossible, but it would need some more thought than it has currently received, and I think a well-written ethics policy could be fairly robust to manipulation.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3mo ago
Fewer court members = greater importance on a single member, which only triples down on the trend of nominating way young people (which hurts the ability to fairly evaluate candidates as well as their average actual ability and experience) and makes a single nomination more fractious, not less...? For context there have been 116 justices ever and only 59 terms so that would imply the average size of the court, long term, would be only 4-5 justices under that proposal (of course if the average age dips that number could get larger, but the court on average would still be likely smaller, I think). Very rough math but the principle checks out.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3mo ago
Maybe the more boring answer is that people don't actually use complete, formal phrases when searching? Though this might have ninja-changed in the last day or two, "assassination" autocompletes with "trump" as the second option ("attempted" sounds like newspaper speak more than what people actually google, which is often more of a "tags/keywords" approach). I literally don't know a single person who would ever type "US" before "President" and that's doubly true when you're doing a Google search for a clearly active politician.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3mo ago
Trump Says He Wants to Deport Millions. He’ll Have a Hard Time Removing More People Than Biden Has (archive here)
Thought this might contribute in an interesting way to the current talk about deportation, expulsion, and the election. So we all know Trump is talking a big game right now about mass deportation. Interestingly, the article mentions that at least in theory, 42% of Democrats also support mass deportation (and slightly over half of Americans overall). Of course, like the wall, it's of some question whether and how much it would happen, and of course we haven't talked at all about who would pay for it this time. Not only are there legal hurdles a president can't fix alone or even sometimes with legislation, at least not easily, but there's also diplomatic considerations -- a lot of countries literally refuse to take people back, planes are expensive, and there's a pilot shortage anyways. The closing quote considers mass deportations more of a general rallying cry on the seriousness level of "defund the police".
Basically the article points out that under existing deportations, there appears to be a cap based on ICE's funding and priorities and infrastructure of at most 30,000 deportations in a month, and this seems to be a roughly hard cap across administrations. Please take a look at this chart or it might lack context. The article talks about how under Title 42's implementation, which was started by Trump in March 2020 and kept in place by Biden when he took office in 2021 and continues through today, you were allowed to more effectively expel migrants (note the phrasing - this is not deportation!) and at high rates, usually at or near the border (unlike deportation, which is usually the culmination of a longer process and involves courts usually).
Largely due to this, the Biden administration actually expelled millions more migrants than Trump did!
During just his first two years in office, Biden used [Title 42] to kick out over 2.8 million migrants. That’s a stunning number. In Trump’s entire time in the White House, his administration removed only 2 million people total.
That's quite a quote. Two years of Biden was more than four years of Trump? Yes. Of course the Biden (and now Harris) campaign probably didn't want to talk about this so explicitly, but there you have it. ICE was surged to the border and prioritized that over internal searches, so that was part of it, and remember that currently, actual deportation is kind of at its limit, in addition to costing thousands of dollars per case, which likely wouldn't change substantially even under the most rosy of Trump deportation plans (though it's possible the time per case might drop with more resources the time to train and prepare the bureaucracy and infrastructure would be significant). The article notes that claims of using the National Guard to do deportations isn't very realistic -- it would take a decent amount of time and training to get them set up to do so, and so using their manpower is far from a panacea.
Anyways, definitely look at the chart. Is this good evidence that threats of mass deportations are indeed political theater more than an actual proposal? Or should anti-immigration voters actually consider a vote for Harris?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3mo ago
That's somewhat fair. Do note of course that the Senate is still involved and has to sign off, so it's still involving all 3 branches, not just one. I think the proposal needs a little more detail or clarification about the expected role of the Senate.
Additionally, the fact that justices can't be removed (assuming #3 about ethics either doesn't pass or doesn't go too crazy partisan, and which needs WAY more work IMO to be worth considering) is still a big balance. 18 years is still mostly a lifetime appointment, and justices still care about the legacy of the court and their own reputation and such. Worrying about selection bias is still a totally valid concern though.
All of this misses the point though. We already see justices nominated and confirmed in roughly 18 year cycles! All this proposal does is standardize and make these changes more regular!! So basically the proposal can only make things better, not worse.
I could see however a variant of #3 being included either on its own or along with #2 (or implemented by tradition), where justices abstain by default from cases involving the sitting president who nominated them being a good compromise? That means a justice can't bail out their benefactor right away. That would come with its own downsides of course (e.g. a 5 justice court 7 years in to a two-term president). So I don't think it would work.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3mo ago
What's the point of amending the Constitution permanently? Uh, obviously to create permanent change? It's more weird that you consider an amendment to be a short-term strategy. At least when we're talking about the construction of the amendment itself.
In the medium to long term it seems pretty healthy for the system to institute an 18 year thing. As I mentioned in my other comment, the timeframe is already in line with the current average time on the bench (or even a little longer), and furthermore if we go farther back in history, due to shorter lifespans, the Founding Fathers already would have viewed modern bench duration as an aberration. Thus this change is not only a wise move for future systemic stability (for BOTH parties, since long-term most parties still only expect to win only a little more than half the time) but also perfectly in keeping with precedent and, more controversially but probably correctly, the Framers' intent.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3mo ago
As a source they were asked about the "perceived threat" and found no difference, so while that's still a plausible claim of yours, note that the average is only just under 6 (1-10 "not a threat" to "extreme threat"), so I don't find that argument about doomsday media very convincing. Clearly most people only consider it a medium threat of some sort.
So ChatGPT cites Bush-era Secretary of State/NSA Condoleezza Rice, three-decade Maryland senator Barbara Mikulski, one term Illinois Black senator Carol Moseley Braun, and two-decade Maine senator Olympia Snowe. Interestingly, ChatGPT decided to add a little thing to the end saying leadership isn't impacted by having kids without prompting. Though I probably disagree with the politics of at least some, on both sides of the aisle, I think at least two of those were relatively prominent?
Still, this doesn't quite answer our original question, which was more about the administrative machinery, often alleged to be non-elected. I have no idea if good statistics exist for the federal workforce more broadly, though probably not. Maybe a good proxy would be to go more local? And anyways childless women in politics aren't like crazy common, at least none come to mind right away, but part of that is we haven't had decent representation of women in Congress for very long either. Still if anything childless women (in electoral politics) seem to be very under-represented? Back of envelope math puts the proportion of childless women as about a quarter of adult women, though that likely goes down if you cut off the age a little higher (like most politicians). However, if you look at most female politicians, the vast majority seem to have kids. So yeah, back to local politics I guess.
I used this wiki page of notable women legislators in my home state of Oregon (which I thought might represent a liberal and childless state) and asked GPT to look up how many did or did not have kids. In my random sample of 15 people from that list, 3 did not, 2 were unclear, and 7 did. That doesn't seem too out of line with the general population. And the ones I read about (there were a few obituaries) seemed to have been impactful even when they didn't have kids.
So I really don't see the pattern Vance is talking about. I think he's talking out of his ass.
While it's impossible to ignore the online dimension of Vance criticism (and what kind of criticism isn't at least a little online nowadays?) that's not what gives the criticism its legs. No, the concern lies in what the more accurate political pundits are saying about his potential influence on the election, and this is grounded in polling, so it's not just white noise.
Two particular and factual points. Recent polling indicates that in his "home region" which includes significant battleground states (that's Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin), CNN pegged him at -16 net favorability, which is dramatic. Especially considering that usually VP picks are chosen specifically for their help in swing states! That he's hurting them there instead is notable.
Second, if we look nationally and compare again to historic VP picks, his polling is currently worse than Sarah Palin at the same point in time (i.e. right after the convention). And potentially the worst ever. One poll had net approval as -5 and another at -13. In fact literally no VP pick ever has had a negative net favorability rating (edit: at this stage)!
So yeah. It's not just insiders. This is data from voters themselves. Sure, that's a function of media attention in some respect, but this early in the campaign? I think a claim that it's just people out to get him is unsupported.
edit: Palin trajectory for comparison. She did end up around -20 net. Since typically net favorability tends to decrease for most VP candidates as the campaign goes on, starting already in the red is worrying. Note that although the chart goes longer, her net rating was only around zero-ish when the 2008 election actually happened, so -5 is still worse than she ever was during the actual campaign!!
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3mo ago
Sorry, it's not quite accurate to paraphrase him as saying "[m]en and [w]omen should want to start families". That's his defense of his comments (painting the Democrats as anti-family, perhaps correctly), but he also took pains to say that being a parent does influence your perspective and that the government is overrun by corporate oligarchs with misaligned incentives. Obviously there's some good substance in what he's saying!
However, he did explicitly say that miserable Democratic women "effectively run" the country. His defense doesn't change the quote. Which not only seems to be outright false on its face (women aren't even the majority of decision-makers in the bureaucracy, much less childless ones) but also his comments pretty much explicitly stating that parental status can make change how you run the country for the worse I disagree with (even if I sympathize with the feeling, which I do). I mean, George freaking Washington never had kids. Same for Madison and Buchanan and Jackson and Polk (though not all were "good" presidents of course). I mean out of 46 that's not so many, but still. It's kind of like the old tired claim that atheists can't have a moral code.
I think both belief in God and being a parent are generally positive influences on your moral code, but it's far from deterministic and their lack is certainly not insurmountable. Beyond that I don't think it moves the needle much, really. As a simple and factual example to back up my point, parents and nonparents worry about climate change at very similar rates. If parental status were in fact the dealbreaker, you'd see much more of a difference. But we don't, even though nonparents quite literally don't have skin in the game the same way, and the same applies to government. Sure, the perspective of a parent still matters and if we had a dramatically abnormal lack of parents in leadership I might worry. But that doesn't seem to be the case at all.
So in short, Vance is wrong, and people are perfectly entitled to take issue with both what he actually said and what he continues to say he actually believes.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3mo ago
Romney never would have agreed, though, so it's super strange he was even being mentioned. I mean, he was the only person to vote to convict Trump on impeachment!
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3mo ago
Nepotism is an interesting thing. They key to getting away with it seems to be that you need to wait until you yourself are done with politics before they can "take up the mantle"... or else people look on it more unfavorably.
Since the first rule of VP picks is "do no harm", choosing a son would be potentially disastrous. It doesn't play well with regular people or swing voters.
Approximately zero percent chance we'd start in 2026, though. Even popular amendments usually take longer to run through all the state legislatures, I think. Still good research. Might work out if Roberts/Alito/Thomas decided to retire or something, which I view as at least somewhat possible (in a longer timespan for ratification, maybe 4 years?)
Edit: I stand corrected. Looks like most take about a year, and some take up to 3?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3mo ago
I would imagine that spending 18 years, on top of having enough of a legal career to merit consideration as a SC justice (they would probably return to older nominations because the lifetime incentive to nominate super young ones would disappear), would be a long enough span of time that by the time you're done on the SC, your career is basically done anyways. So 18 years is too short to worry about a revolving door, at the very least for this particular position (might not extend to senators).
In fact, if you look at historical data the median age range (50-54) already serves an average of 18.6 years. That means a nominee of that age is going to be 68-74 when they're done, which leaves not that much time for corrupt profit. Or even no time at all! Remember, that historical average time served on the bench is usually ended by, uh, literal death or often major illness. And the most common age group is actually 55-59, so the problem would be even less notable.
So basically your worry about selling out is ranges from a minimal worry to a non-issue, according to the data.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3mo ago
Just for clarity, are you suggesting that a Rubicon crossing is less likely if we allow the President more leeway? Personally I disagree. I think being too permissive with a President is the more dangerous road. Think of it like parenting. While of course being "too strict" with your kids often leads to trouble and rebellion eventually, that's not the situation we're in. Since the Presidency (and Executive) in general is currently receiving more "lax parenting" from the legal process, I think doing a better job of setting rules and boundaries is more helpful and more likely to prevent a President doing something dramatically bad. In other words, those boundaries and restrictions on the President prevent malfeasance. I think giving the President too much space to do whatever they want without good boundaries is a recipe for the President to push those boundaries as much as possible. Much like teens might, boundary-pushing is expected and declining to set any in the first place is not a good parenting strategy.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3mo ago
Quite frankly I don't see almost anything wrong at all with the term limit proposal (#2), it seems pretty well thought out.... as long as long as we could fix the problem about the Senate indefinitely delaying holding hearings or constantly shooting down nominees. A notable silence.
In fact I like it quite a bit. 18 years is over four presidential cycles, which is quite a while (and nicely out of sync) and it would arguably make people treat presidential elections even more seriously if they knew that they were guaranteed a say in the judicial running of the country. Plus, there's at least some middle to long-term incentive for both parties to get it done, I think (short term of course it seems probably technically irrational from a pure power struggle perspective for the GOP).
Of course the link doesn't contain actual proposed language that I can see, and that would be nice to have. Would show some seriousness. I suppose people need to chew on the idea a little bit of course.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3mo ago
Theoretically, no, not really. The Constitution declined to put limits in place on what exactly could and could not be amended. There has been a smattering of attention here and there about a what-if scenario about how an amendment might be ruled unconstitutional if it substantially altered something fundamental about the system as a whole (like replacing it all whole cloth with a dictatorship) but the reality is that the threshold for amendments is set so high that such a ruling would be highly, highly unlikely to overturn the will of the people (and from a pure power perspective, even more unlikely -- the state and national governments basically is the government, not the judiciary, at the end of the day). One other narrow but related issue is can you amend the amendment process itself? But the answers are similar. Especially given that technically major parts of SCOTUS' judicial review power is itself the result of SCOTUS' own taking of the role (Marbury v Madison), at least philosophically, which weakens SCOTUS' argument even if they were to advance one.
The one major exception to this is the Constitution stipulates that you can't take a specific state's representation away unless they say it's okay. That is, you can't "un-state" a state even if you meet the amendment requirements. The argument about that one is slightly more up for debate.
My understanding is other countries have to confront this problem more directly in some cases specifically because they lack the high threshold we do.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3mo ago
I think the main thing we learned was that the assassin's ties to Cuba were deeper than first thought, but most of the coverup of that fact appears to have been post-facto reputation-saving rather than an actual government-involved plot to off Kennedy (or a mafia one as first thought). I'm pretty sure most experts who have looked at the stuff concluded the Warren conclusions were fundamentally correct.
I don't think that was necessarily malicious because we know that Facebook fact checkers are just way underpaid people working terrible jobs. And honestly that photo was almost too perfect, I saw it first on twitter and not national media, so I actually did wonder for a little if it was doctored! I was quickly corrected, so I'm curious how long it took Facebook to correct course. Was it minutes, hours, or over a day? The article doesn't say. Was it actually AI detection (which we know for a fact often can have bad accuracy), a malicious worker, corporate suppression, or a random mistake? Hard to know but that's a lot of plausible failure modes. I don't see anything in your link about fact checkers deliberately reposting the same image. Do you have a source for that?
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